SPORTS OF THE TIMES; Favorites Have Way of Fading When Open Is Played at Olympic

By DAVE ANDERSON

Published: June 10, 2012

At the United States Open championship, the charm and the challenge for the world's best golfers is coping with a course many of them have not played for more than a decade, if at all. This year's site is the Lake Course of Olympic Club in San Francisco, a little bit of heaven with mostly sidehill fairways that drift down from the sandy cliffs above the Pacific Ocean through sentries of cypress trees and sloping target greens to the shore of Lake Merced. The club's name is derived from Olympia, the home of the mythical Greek gods, but at its four previous Opens over more than half a century, Olympic has treated human golf gods rudely. And what glorious gods they were.

Ben Hogan, the only professional to win the Masters, the United States Open and the British Open in the same year (1953), after having survived a 1949 crash of his Cadillac with a bus.

Arnold Palmer, golf's most charismatic champion, who popularized the game in the '60s with his telegenic victories at the Masters, the United States Open and the British Open.

Tom Watson, the winner of five British Opens, two Masters and the 1982 United States Open at Pebble Beach, where he holed a wedge from greenside rough to upstage Jack Nicklaus.

Payne Stewart, the throwback in plus fours who won two United States Opens and a P.G.A. Championship before dying at 42 in a private jet's freakish loss of cabin pressure.

In each of those Opens at Olympic, a golf god lost to a less respected rival: twice in an 18-hole playoff (Hogan to the virtual unknown Jack Fleck in 1955, Palmer to the underappreciated Billy Casper in 1966) and twice by one stroke over 72 holes (Watson to the journeyman Scott Simpson in 1987, Stewart to the underrated Lee Janzen in 1998).

If that pattern continues, look for one of golf's current marquee names -- Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Luke Donald, Phil Mickelson or Bubba Watson -- to cruise along in next Sunday's final round until somebody seldom (or never) heard of makes a few birdie putts to win over four rounds or to force an 18-hole playoff.

Open history at Olympic is proof of one of golf's cruelest rules: never assume.

In 1955, when Hogan walked off the 72nd green with a 287 score, he thought he had won his record fifth Open. Handing his ball to Joe Dey, the executive director of the United States Golf Association, he said, ''This is for Golf House,'' the U.S.G.A. museum. On NBC, the analyst Gene Sarazen, a two-time Open winner, went off the air hailing the 43-year-old Hogan as the champion.

But in those years before leaders were in the final pairings, the 1955 Open was not over. ''Fleck still has a chance,'' Hogan was told.

Not many people knew Jack Fleck, an obscure pro from Davenport, Iowa, but Hogan did. Fleck had stopped by the Hogan company's plant in Fort Worth to get a set of the new Hogan irons, which Hogan gave him. Hogan even took two new Hogan wedges to Olympic for Fleck. And as Hogan, alerted to Fleck's opportunity to catch him, waited in the locker room, Fleck's birdie on the 15th pulled him one stroke behind.

After pars on the 16th and 17th, Fleck lofted a 7-iron onto the 18th green and sank a 7-foot birdie putt to create a playoff the next day. Through 12 holes, Fleck was three ahead, then Hogan birdied 14 and 17, but on his tee shot at the 18th, his right foot slipped, his ball diving into the tangled left rough. Finally on the fairway in 4, he holed a 40-foot putt for a double-bogey 6 and 72. Fleck two-putted for 69. Hogan never won a fifth Open.

Palmer, whose final-round 65 had won the 1960 Open at Cherry Hills near Denver, assumed that he was about to win his second Open in 1966, after four Masters and two British Open titles. With nine holes to go in the fourth round at Olympic, he had a seven-stroke lead.

''I let my attention wander from the realities -- winning the tournament -- to pursuing another goal: beating the U.S. Open record of 276 shot by Ben Hogan in 1948,'' he later wrote in his autobiography, ''Go for Broke!'' ''I already had set the British Open record several years earlier and I was beguiled by the thought of holding the U.S. and British Open records.''

At the 10th, Palmer lost a stroke. At the 13th, he lost another. When he bogeyed the 15th while Casper, who had won the 1959 Open at Winged Foot, birdied, his lead was three. At the 16th, Palmer hooked his drive into the rough, chopped an unwise 3-iron 75 yards in the rough and scrambled to a bogey as Casper birdied. And when Palmer bogeyed the 17th, they were tied.

In the next day's playoff, Casper shot 69. Palmer shot 73, his third Open playoff loss. He never won another major.

In the 1987 Open, Watson had a one-stroke lead with five holes to play, but Simpson birdied the 14th, birdied the 15th with a 30-foot putt and birdied the 16th with a 15-foot putt for a one-stroke lead. He preserved it at the 17th with a long bunker shot to 6 feet to save par. At the 18th, Watson's wedge spun back to the front of the uphill green. His 45-foot birdie putt to tie stopped inches short.

''It was probably a 9-iron,'' Watson said of his approach.

Eleven years later at Olympic, Stewart had a one-stroke lead in the final round when his tee shot on the 12th hole stopped in a sand-filled divot. Like Watson, he thought of using a 9-iron, but chose a pitching wedge that missed the green. The bogey dropped him into a tie with Janzen, who had edged him in the 1993 Open at Baltusrol. Stewart faded to a 74 as Janzen shot 68 to win.

Stewart rebounded the next year, winning the Open at Pinehurst No. 2 with a dramatic 15-foot putt on the 72nd green. But four months later, sadly, he was dead.

Now the Open returns to Olympic, where a golf god has always finished second to somebody who emerged from all those cypress trees.

PHOTOS: Billy Casper won a playoff in the 1966 United States Open at Olympic Club in San Francisco. Arnold Palmer let a final-round lead slip away. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ASSOCIATED PRESS); Lee Janzen shot a 68 to beat Payne Stewart by a stroke in the 1998 Open at Olympic Club. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ELAINE THOMPSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS)